An Honest Ghost (14 page)
You’re so reluctant: Peter Cameron Someday This Pain Will
Be Useful To You 55
Am I upsetting: J. D. Salinger Franny and Zooey 196
He looked over: Sarah Schulman The Child 19
“Oh, you’ll see: E. F. Benson David Blaize 54
Here he poured: Virginia Woolf Orlando 89
Joe could only: Charles Dickens Barnbaby Rudge 633
“You’re useless: Binnie Kirshenbaum Pure Poetry 55
He told him: Danilo Kiš A Tomb for Boris 12
“It’s not my: Thomas Bernhard The Loser 14
Don’t we all: Jean-Christophe Valtat 03 68
We identify with: Tim Dean Unlimited Intimacy 23
David gave a: E. F. Benson David Blaize 31
He crawled back: John Banville Doctor Copernicus 85
Words, words, words: William Shakespeare Hamlet (Yale)
60
Every morning: Thomas Bernhard Prose 125
He looked forward: Colm Toibin The Master 233
Well, never mind: Plato Gorgias 13
We observe our: Thomas Dumm Loneliness as a Way of
Life 98
10.
Back in the: Gore Vidal Palimpsest 385
Even the self-deprecating: Joseph P. Lash: Eleanor and
Franklin 179
We spent the: Robert Bolaño Amulet 105
We discovered (very: Jorge Luis Borges Collected Fictions
68
Eleanor gave a: Ivy Compton-Burnett Parents and Children
69
She was wearing: John Fowles The Magus 14
It was that: James Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man 191
I viewed her: Andrew Holleran Nights in Aruba 40
She flung herself: Vladimir Nabokov Laughter in the Dark
62
“What a city: John Ashbery Flow Chart 189
Paris is the: Charles Henri Ford Like Water from a Bucket
208
When I look: David Lehman, ed. Great American Prose
Poems 128
This is in: Conor Cruise O’Brien Camus 78
“Is it a: J. M. Coetzee Waiting for the Barbarians 84
“Do you know: Gioia Timpanelli Sometimes the Soul 151
As if: Thomas Dumm Loneliness as a Way of Life 34
I rose from: Andrew Holleran Nights in Aruba 42
I’ve had it: Robert Bolaño Amulet 35
Let them think: John Francis Hunter The Gay Insider 26
But in France: Milan Kundera Testaments Betrayed 181
This is real: Adam Thirlwell Delighted States 88
Swarms of crows: Franz Kafka The Castle 11
The fact is: Huysmans Against Nature 181
To me it: William Shakespeare Hamlet (Yale) 63
“Well,” she says: Justin Taylor Everything Here is the Best
Thing Ever 117
She moved in: Jean Genet Querelle 152
She was as: Georges Bataille The Blue of Noon 11
She was bizarre: John Fowles The Magus 14
“No means no: Bill Pronzini The Hidden 44
Perhaps you can: Theopile Gautier Mademoiselle de
Maupin 97
“If you’re hungry: Blair Niles Strange Brother 130
She went back: Rachel Ingalls Mrs. Caliban 63
Her thoughts were: Djuna Barnes Nightwood 76
She is inexhaustibly: Theopile Gautier Mademoiselle de
Maupin 99
And though thee: Sylvia Townsend Warner Summer Will
Show 87
Her eyes sparkled: Danilo Kiš A Tomb for Boris 8
What can I: Charles Burkhart I. Compton-Burnett 50
She did not: Carson McCullers Member of the Wedding 22
I understand: Plato Collected Dialogues 619
A woman whom: Colette Pure and Impure 43
I had been: Adam Phillips Equals 122
To poeticize oneself: Søren Kierkegaard Diary of a Seducer
112
It is something: Jacques Lacan Four Fundamental Concepts
of Psychoanalysis 113
She turned: H. Rider Haggard She 231
“What have you: Henry Green Doting 42
She repeated all: Neil Bartlett Ready to Catch Him 198
For if there: Ronald Firbank Three More Novels 52
Imagine what that: Susan Sontag I, etcetera: Stories 144
“You think of: Jenny McPhee A Man of No Moon 208
She was really: Lydie Salvayre Company of Ghosts 15
I am nonviolent: John Francis Hunter Gay Insider 27
Luckily, the: Glen Baxter Returns to Normal (no
page numbers)
It’s still too: John Ashbery April Galleons 23
“I wish I: Noel Coward Pomp and Circumstance 49
The indifference in: Jorges Luis Borges Collected Fictions
284
What makes us: Adam Phillips On Balance 267
The evening ended: Glen Baxter Returns to Normal (no
page numbers)
The great revolutions: Justin O’Brien Camus 34
If, as John: Adam Phillips On Balance 93
11.
Now that the: Denton Welch Maiden Voyage 210
At night this: Alfred Chester Looking for Genet 172
Cars were rare: Justin Taylor Everything Here is the Best
Thing Ever 3
The black cattle: Glenway Wescott Continual Lessons 175
Night music: Marlene Van Niekerk Agaat 2
Most of the: Clive Fisher Hart Crane 251
But the people: Elizabeth Gilbert Last American Man 215
The high cold: James Joyce Dubliners 33
2:00-5:00: Susan Sontag Reborn 17
The pen was: John Ashbery April Galleons 1
I could go: Joshua Mehigan The Optimist 58
I wrote about: Robert Bolaño By Night in Chile 84
Every book is: Helen Keller The World I Live In 14
How deep-seated: Glenway Wescott Continual Lessons 169
Like an earnest: Kenneth Burke Towards a Better Life 24
It is up: Charles Guignon On Being Authentic 130
These are the: Adam Phillips On Balance 236
They lived und: James Joyce Finnegans Wake 28
What a difference: Pascal Pensees 168
I am forever: John Francis Hunter The Gay Insider 78
Silly seasons: Harold Bloom Anatomy of Influence 13
Tinkering over sentences: David McConnell Firebrat 3
Lately, my sexual: Susan Sontag I, etcetera: Stories 45
Revenge fucking: Michael Herr Kubrick 88
I felt excellent: Walter Kirn My Hard Bargain 103
Nonetheless my condition: David Markson Wittgenstein’s
Mistress 133
Loners can be: David McConnell Firebrat 3
It was all: Frederick Seidel Poems 1959-2009 9
Unending flights: W. G. Sebald After Nature 61
Other people see: Adam Phillips On Balance 224
I entered silently: Edmund White Noctures for the King of
Naples 84
Then I stood: Daniel Kehlmann Me and Kaminsky 94
After that it: Graham Greene May We Borrow Your
Husband 140
Writers are a: Justin O’Brien Camus 103
Our ears: Henry James Portrait of a Lady 311
The better you: D. H. Lawrence Studies in Classic
American Literature 42
Yet I could: John Ashbery Flow Chart 178
I am beginning: Andre Gide The Counterfeiters 205
I have always: Elizabeth Hardwick Sleepless Nights 11
And this must: Ludwig Wittgenstein Notebooks 1914-1916 13
My mother’s femaleness: Elizabeth Hardwick Sleepless Nights 21
My mother was: Georges Bataille The Blue of Noon 12
This was her: Dezso Kosztalanyi Skylark 15
And walking in: Djuna Barnes Nightwood 61
For nothing could: Lydie Salvayre Company of Ghosts 18
The dizziness and: E. F. Benson The Freaks of Mayfair 53
Women baffled me: Andrew Holleran Nights in Aruba 33
I was born: Wayne Koestenbaum Moira Orfei in Aigues
Mortes 6
It was an: Mary McCarthy The Group 292
It was 1968: Paul Griffiths Modern Music 173
A sordid sexual: David McConnell Firebrat 81
From the beginning: Mikis Theodorakis Journal of
Resistance 29
It’s something almost: David Wojnarowicz Memories That
Smell Like Gasoline 47
Grown-ups tried: Jean-Christophe Valtat 03 69
I was a: Jean Genet The Declared Enemy 8
My mother was: Andrew Holleran Nights in Aruba 33
Days and nights: Thomas Bernhard Prose 121
After I had: Denton Welch Maiden Voyage 7
I knew that: George Orwell An Age Like This 1
I became a: Richard Rodriguez Brown 147
Land of noble: Walicki A History of Russian Thought 75
New York City: Hart Crane Libray of America: Complete
Poems and Selected Letters 306
New York seemed: James Blake The Joint 309
Meanwhile, the possibility: Paul Griffiths Modern Music
150
Thank you, Proust: Michael Cunningham By Nightfall 17
I was glad: Denton Welch Maiden Voyage 35
Then the amazing: E. F. Benson The Freaks of Mayfair 111
My mother wanted: John Cheever Stories 691
“My dear,” she: F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby 40
My childhood was: Fran Lebowitz Reader 38
My mother has: Susan Sontag I, etcetera: Stories 133
My father went: Teju Cole Open City 188
Though long dead: Gore Vidal Palimpsest 256
Insanity, of course: Mark Rowlands The Philosopher and
the Wolf 18
We find our: Charles Guignon On Being Authentic 87
“I didn’t,” said Joe: O. Henry The Four Million 67
My experience of: John Cage Musicage 60
Perhaps the least: Fran Lebowitz Reader 88
Yet any distinction: Harold Bloom Anatomy of Influence 4
12.
David woke next: E. F. Benson David Blaize 34
He changed some: Vladimir Nabokov Laughter in the Dark 110
At all events: W. G. Sebald Vertigo 18
There were so: James Joyce Dubliners 107
He regarded himself: Kenneth Silverman Begin Again 88
He had many: Gioia Timpanelli Sometimes the Soul 154
It was a: James Joyce Dubliners 182
He tried to: James Joyce Dubliners 39
For the moment: Richard Ellmann James Joyce 66
He felt that: Vladimir Nabokov Laughter in the Dark 19
He had a: D. H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers 88
The idea of: Adam Phillips On Balance 224
I am sure: Ivy Compton-Burnett A Family and a Fortune 25
Which made it: Daniel Kehlmann Measuring the World 250
Mind you: Petros Abatzoglou What Does Mrs. Freeman Want? 94
His wife was: Dezso Kosztalanyi Skylark 79
But nobody came: Patrick White Vivisector 418
Obscurely, each thought: Bruce Duffy The World As I Found It 283
She noticed that: Henry James Portrait of a Lady 248
At such moments: W. G. Sebald Vertigo 28
It’s corny: Michael Cunningham By Nightfall 16
“I suppose I: Blair Niles Strange Brother 221
The metaphor: Alex Ross Listen to This 16
I was still: Glen Baxter The Further Blurtings of Glen
Baxter [no page numbers]
But one has: Jacques Lacan Four Fundamental Concepts
133
There are moments: R.P. Blackmur Studies in Henry James
197
It was all: Dezso Kosztalanyi Skylark 84
Moral: slack beds: Richard Howard Inner Voices 409
I rubbed his: Edmund White My Lives 239
The poor man: Thomas Bernhard My Prizes 89
Still, he has: Mark Merlis American Studies 245
I didn’t like: Michael Cunningham By Nightfall 22
I told him: Charles Henri Ford Like Water From a Bucket
149
A dreadful silence: E. F. Benson Freaks of Mayfair 123
13.
By late September: Ron Padgett Joe 216
He lived a: Frederick Seidel Poems 1959-2009 195
But he came: Gilbert Highet Poets in a Landscape 17
To travel without: Sylvia Townsend Warner Summer Will
Show 85
One day while: Filip Noterdaeme The Autobiography of
Daniel J. Isengart 45
He lay half: Patrick White Vivisector 448
We’ve been discussing: Susan Sontag Reborn 84
He slouched down: Gilbert Adair Love and Death on Long
Island 132
“When I try: Ronald Firbank Three More Novels 36
The slight asymmetry: Edmund White Rimbaud 9
I liked being: Colette Pure and Impure 107
Those who meet: B. K. S. Iyengar Light on Yoga 45
“This,” I said: Giacomo Casanova History of My Life 707
Believe it or: Bruce Duffy The World As I Found It 220
“Whoa, slow down: Edward St Aubyn At Last 114
“Do you really: Sylvia Townsend Warner The Corner That
Held Them 56
All his life: Ron Padgett Joe 266
I exaggerate: Anita Brookner Look at Me 18
He never gave: Robert Walser The Assistant 281
That would be: Jane Gardam Faith Fox 81
But in general: Ron Padgett Joe 134
He waggled a: John Banville The Untouchable 139
“When one is: Ludwig Wittgenstein Notebooks 1914-1916
10
He was so: Robert Frost The Notebooks of Robert Frost 32
The sadness of: Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio 234
I could not: W. G. Sebald Rings of Saturn 5
He remembered his: Edna O’Brien James Joyce 12
In this he: Virginia Woolf Orlando 113
“Thank you for: D. H. Lawrence Selected Letters 307
Where did you: Bertolt Brecht Galileo 47
The book was: John Ashbery April Galleons 5
Joe had been: Ron Padgett Joe 52
It is all: D. H. Lawrence Studies in Classic American
Literature 148
The price he: John Banville The Untouchable 268
It seemed to: Glen Baxter Atlas (no page numbers)
I am a: Alex Ross Listen to This 5
I felt myself: Anita Brookner Look at Me 87
That is how: J. M. Coetzee Diary of a Bad Year 91
Silence, he said: Virginia Woolf Orlando 93
We take long: James Merrill The Changing Light at
Sandover 23
Sunshine, a bird: Roland Barthes Mourning Diary 166
Forced to make: Stephen Jay Gould Hen’s Teeth 164
You never stop: Lydie Salvayre The Power of Flies 55
Apart from that: Jean Echenoz Piano 114
To all appearances: James Blake The Joint 157
Or maybe not: Jean Echenoz Piano 87
It was that: H. G. Wells The Time Machine 27
The other houses: James Joyce Dubliners 71
